http://www.fiveminutetheatre.com was a virtual live theatre project powered by webcasting and standard Scottish bandwidth! The National Theatre Scotland celebrated their 5th birthday by showing online 24 hours of live 5 minute pieces of theatre, by anyone, for everyone. My other company Envirodigital have been the technical consultants, and producers. To provide an insight and  case study of how we’ve pulled this event together, NTS have built up a video blog over the weeks.

Also in this blog: an update on the digital developments of Sadler’s Wells, Timespan Museum, Arts and Heritage Centre, and Stellar Quines theatre company.

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AmbITion Scotland’s next webinar will be introduced by Hannah Rudman, and webcast by Envirodigital. It’s live on the day at Inspace, 1 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB.

Last Thursday I watched an NTLive! almost-live simulcast at my local Cameo Cinema, of Frankenstein, London’s hottest sold out ticket, directed by Danny Boyle (to see it in London, I’d have to queue for a day ticket -from 1am, when the queue starts forming!).

The production was mesmerising, engaging, gripping and yes, it was live theatre on stage, with its sweat, spits, and occasional trips and stammers, recorded for digital distribution. Except, this time, it wasn’t quite live.

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I’m delighted to announce that my other company#fiveminutetheatre! Envirodigital are consultant producers for Five Minute Theatre.

NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND MARKS ITS 5TH BIRTHDAY WITH A VIRTUAL 24 HOUR THEATRE PROJECT

Today, 25th February, 2011, the National Theatre of Scotland marks its fifth birthday by opening public submissions for a nationwide virtual theatre project as well as announcing details of a series of public platforms aimed at provoking and facilitating cultural debate.

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@WeDidThisUK ‘s Ed Whiting explains the aspirations and opportunities of the UK’s latest crowd source fundraising website, WeDidThis.

Launch of ‘Wedidthis’ at the MMM Culture Change Conference from Simone Jaeger on Vimeo.

Google’s ultra-high resolution Street View cameras have been sneaking around galleries in nine countries – out of hours – to capture the world’s finest art collections as 360 degree digital tours. The Art Project was launched at Tate Britain yesterday, and includes 385 rooms, and 1061 different pieces.

Each gallery has also chosen one piece to be digitised in ultra-high resolution (7bn pixels), which allows you see a masterpiece in greater detail than the human eye and most microscopes can manage. This encourages people to study art works in depth, for better understanding technique, subject, materials/construction and realisation, and is a move away from the noughties obsession in the visual arts sector as of digitisation as a mechanism for futureproofing archiving.

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With UK Arts Minister Ed Vaizey delivering a speech (no I didn’t write it, although many have asked me if I had!) about how cultural organisations must develop digitally and work more with digital industries in order to be sustainable, its a great indicator that engaging with AmbITion’s opportunities is timely and appropriate organisational development.

It’s that time of year again for Hannah Rudman to sum up the 2010 digital developments in the cultural sector. Generally, we’ve seen more audience participation online and in venue, and digital access to culture becoming a mainstream activity.

Here’s my pick of the main developments in each art form: for more detail on what individual arts organisations have been up to, especially in Scotland, visit the AmbITion Scotland website for video case studies.

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Digital access to the arts and culture is extending, rather than replacing, the live experience of the arts, and the Internet is now playing a much broader role in arts engagement than simply acting as a marketing channel. A significant minority use it not only to consume and share artistic content, but also to create it; and over half use social networking sites regularly. These latest findings from a major survey of 2,000 adult Internet users appear to “confirm that engaging with the arts through digital media is now a mainstream activity”.

So reports Arts Professional, announcing the Arts Council England, Arts & Business & Museums Libraries and Archives council commissioned report by MTM “Digital-audiences-for-arts-and-culture-november2010.pdf”>Digital Audiences for Arts & Culture“.

Arts & Business have published an insightful new report that shows the benefits of the digital industries working with the cultural industries – Evolution of Partnerships: Impact of Technology on Cultural Partnerships.

It’s a great interactive online read (videos, case studies) on how arts organisations are partnering with digital business to create new platforms, apps, and ‘social’ audience builders for the cultural sector. (If you like this style of online document presentation, but would like to be able to embed it on your website or social network pages, see Yudu).

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